If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

Intel Announces The Core i7 Processor

Phoronix: Intel Announces The Core i7 Processor

There was the Core and Core 2 series of Intel desktop processors with Solo, Duo, Quad, and Extreme postfixes, while today Intel has announced their Core series will continue with their upcoming Nehalem processors. The processors based around their forthcoming Nehalem micro-architecture will be branded as the Intel Core i7. The Nehalem architecture supports dual, quad, and octal core processors based on a 45nm manufacturing process, introduces an integrated DDR3 memory controller on the CPU die, uses Intel QuickPath Interconnect technology, and simultaneous multi-threading...

We (My day job at Tektronix...) have a Nehalem based eval board in hand in the Quad configuration under review for suitability to task and performance for an ATCA configuration using Embedded Linux to drive it all. So far, it seems pretty solid and rather fast compared to the older stuff we've been futzing with...

Ok lets get this right.. Quickpath is NOT the replacement for the PCI-express bus. It's the replacement for the FSB. Quickpath enables the onchip memory controller to interface with the memory. Intel has no incentive to replace it with PCI-x of all things coz of 2 reasons

1. PCI-x was not specifically designed for this
2. Even traditional FSB provides bandwidth comparable to PCi-x

The basic reason intel has gone for a faster switch based interconnect like quickpath is to ensure that it can feed it's hungry cores with memory ASAP. If this interface becomes the bottleneck then the performance may drop by a HUGE amount especially in memory intensive applications

Integrated memory controller ==> on-chip memory controller in my post above. For "everything else" on the motherboard, PCI-express is gud enough. QPI will mean a lot especially on massively multicore systems as they will need to be fed data from the memory at a very fast pace. And thats the direction (multicore) being taken by Intel as well as AMD.

Well it is not compatible with socket 775, I guess thats why they wanted a new name.

Intel made Pentium 4s for three different sockets- PGA423, mPGA478, and LGA775 and made both P4s and Cores on LGA775.

The "Core i7" name sucks as even though Intel was the original user of the "i" prefix (i386, etc.) in naming, it sounds like something the black turtleneck crew came up with. "Core" sucks as a brand name too- did they have Abbott and Costello come up with that one, with two-core Cores and then Core 2s. Intel is randomly using the Pentium brand name as well, so I think a new brand name ending with an "ium" or "on" suffix is needed. How about "Cerebron" or "Velocium?"